The first part of the Eric Berne archives was released this summer at the ITAA Conference. Some of the people reading this likely attended the conference. We have been fortunate to be able to post some of the more interesting items found in Part I of the archives.

The photo above was taken at a Washington Street Seminar in San Francisco in 1958. Directly to Eric’s left is Viola Litt.

This photo is taken at the First Summer TA Conference in 1963. The woman is unidentified.

All images courtesy the Eric Berne Archives at UCSF. We hope you all enjoy these photos as much as we do.

Many of you are aware that Eric Berne used several pen-names throughout his career. Lennard Gandalac was one that Berne used dating back to his days as an undergraduate at McGill University.

In late 1968, Eric Berne, using the name Lennard Gandalac, submitted a 12 page piece of fiction to The New Yorker magazine called The Revolt. The original manuscript was recently uncovered from the family archives. The first page is seen below:

In an envelope postmarked January 13, 1969, the manuscript was sent back along with the following note:

At this point, Eric Berne was well known across the country and elsewhere as a brilliant psychiatrist and author. But he was new to fiction, having only published The Happy Valley just recently. Fiction was something he was not accustomed to. So this begs the question: was the story rejected because of poor writing or because Lennard Gandalac was an unknown?

This is a new photo just released from the Eric Berne Family Archive. It is from the ITAA’s 8th Annual Summer Conference held in Monterey, California in August, 1970. The conference took place approximately 1 month after Eric’s unexpected death.

The individuals in the photo (from left to right) are: Ellen Berne (Eric’s only blood daughter – she was 25 at the time), David Kupfer, Franklin Ernst, Viola Callaghan, Ken Everts, and Claude Steiner.

The “theme” of the conference was changed radically due to Eric’s death. As a result, it became more of a tribute to the legacy of Eric Berne, and this photograph reflects it. The expressions on Ellen Berne’s face tells us all we need to know about the mood of the conference.

Another new release from the family archive includes two photo proofs of Eric. The shoot and photographer are unknown. Based upon his appearance, we believe it is from the mid to late 1960s.

Clicking on the photo will reveal a high quality version.

These are proofs because on closer analysis you will see indentations within the photographic paper. These photographic proofs were in the collection of Eric’s oldest daughter Ellen Berne. Clicking on it will reveal a high quality version.

You can appreciate Eric’s sense of humor and quirkiness by looking at these two photographs. You can see there is a real person behind his genius. To us, it looks like he is displaying his Child in one of them. What do you think?

Two new photographs of Dr. Eric Berne are being released. One is a previously released but rarely seen photo of Eric at a poker table holding poker chips. This photograph was featured in the 1970 Life Magazine review of Sex in Human Loving, published posthumously.

The second is a previously unreleased photo of Eric courtesy of his step-daughter Janet. It shows Eric, presumed to be in the mid to late 1960s, standing outside next to a building in a suit. He is holding is pipe in his left hand. The location and exact date of this photo is unknown. There is some minor distortion of the photo but it is still excellent quality!